hoME Improvement?

So my new fancy Stryd after 3 runs is telling me I have a few areas to improve on.  The problem is how does someone who’s #notarunner build a training plan around these recommendations?  That’s one thing I’m running with the Stryd and any advanced data/metrics is “Okay I have all this data.  Now what?”   My leg stiffness is X.  Yay?  Boo?  My ground contact time is XXXms.  Okay?

where I can get the best bang for my buck.”

Stryd doesn’t as far as I can find offer any information on what these numbers mean, if they’re good or bad or indifferent, and if they’re bad how to improve them.

Now some data is obvious like GCT or ground contact time.  The less time you’re in contact with the ground the faster you’re going.  Duh.

Interestingly I found some data on some of these numbers in an article that just mentions them in passing.   But they outlined that some vertical oscillation is good, too much is bad.  Same with GCT where most runners fall between here and there.   And leg stiffness is actually a good thing within a certain range as it increases running economy.

I have a Garmin based marathon training plan that kicks in after my half marathon this weekend.  But now I need to work on using that as a base plan and then incorporate targeted workouts the Stryd is telling me where I can get the best bang for my buck into the Garmin plan.

My thought is keep the Sunday long run obviously.   Then add Hills, Fartleks, Intervals etc as the other training each week and just keep increasing the times/repetitions.   The problem is that’s tedious grunt work and I hate tedious grunt work.  I like that I can select a plan on Garmin and then set a start date and hit ‘send to watch’ and done.   I sync the Garmin calendar to my Google calendar, turn on notifications and get a 24 hour heads up about what I’m doing the next day and I can print the calendar to show my week.   No muss, no micro managing each workout.

Another thing I’m not real sure of is what is a “High Volume Easy Run” versus a “Long Run”.   Do you just run a lot of easy runs but at what distance?  Should I stick a Z1 run of 3 miles in on all my current off days?

Anyway this is all in my road to doing either a marathon or a 50K this fall.  The bad part is I’m training for a marathon or 50K distance during Oklahoma summers in the middle of climate change madness causing hotter than normal temperatures.  But what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger is what I hear.